Characteristics Of A Cult

[robitusson]

What are the characteristics of a cult?

For one they label outsiders and non-believers. In the case of AA they're "dry drunks" or "not real alcoholics". AA is not interested in all alcoholics, but only the ones who relate to AA itself.

To the Alcoholics Anonymous membership, anyone who stops drinking without chanting the mantras of cult founder Bill W. are "dry drunks," pure and simple. You don't even need to know anything more about the self-quitters -- the fact that they quit drinking without A.A. makes them dry drunks, a priori.

http://www.moonmac.com/Cult_Called_AA.html

Cults also demand free will to be given up. AA expresss this in its 12 steps. Personal responsability is handed away to an imaginary "Higher Power", often the AA group itself. "I came, I came to, I came to believe" as the AA members say.

The giving over of the members identity to AA is ritualised in the confessional sharing that goes on at meetings. The most private and inner-most secrets are the ones members are encouraged to divulge.

To demonstrate the occurrence of this technique, Alexander and Rollins quoted such indiscreet disclosures as: “I modeled for porno photos to get money for booze.” And: “I tried to stab people, shoot at people, hit them with a pan . . . ” In AA meetings, speakers are expected to “qualify,” or give enough of their stories to show that they, too, are “alcoholics.”

http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecente.../is_aa_cult.htm

Cults often stress the necessity of the group for survival and members develop dependence on the group. Similarily AA members are told flat out they will die should they leave the group.

Those who don't get sober are told they didn't follow the program, as outlined in the Big Book.

The Big Book is vague and ambiguous, containing page after page of metaphorical gibberish. Nobody can ever understand it because it doesn't make any sense. There is a format in the Big Book, a combination of absolute statements and metaphorical phrases: "thoroughly follow our path," "completely give themselves to this simple program," "want what we have and be willing to got to any lengths..." These are the "instructions" that tell one how to stay sober. The instructions are incomprehensible; this is one of the many reasons that an overwhelming majority of members relapse within a short period of time.

http://www.geocities.com/drugsandalcoholin...troltactics.htm

Of course members are told they are free to come and go as they please but not before a bombardment of emotional and mental manipulaion dressed up as science.

t appears...that contact with A.A. is more likely to be accompanied by a greater degree of coercion than...most cases of religious conversion" (Greil and Rudy 1983, p. 23).

http://www.schaler.net/fifth/cultbusting.html

Any dissent the member may voice is labelled as the "disease" of alcoholism itself. Misgivings, questions and queries about the group are "the disease talking", evidenc that the member needs more meetings, more sponser time, more program steps, more of the cult.

Many cults exploit their members financially, which treatment centres that advocate the 12 step approach can do.

Witness the case of a family faced with having to sell their home in order to pay for the mother’s long-term addiction treatment — after she had already been through nine expensive Twelve Step treatment regimens in just two years.

http://oldweb.uwp.edu/academic/criminal.justice/aacult01.htm

Keep staying away.

Edited December 5, 2006 by robitusson

[Jai Dee]

Thanks for your viewpoint Robitusson.

/Closed.